[MPlayer-users] two cents: why dvdnav is needed (why mplayer will die from this)

[Gábor Lénárt]

On Mon, Mar 03, 2003 at 03:08:18AM -0600, Daniel Hauck wrote:
> [Automatic answer: RTFM (read DOCS, FAQ), also read DOCS/bugreports.html]
> I've been watching this list for a bit and I am observing why mplayer
> will die the way so many other decent projects do.
> 
> Quite a few years ago, before Windows was the only way to do things and
> all the best games were in DOS, I knew this one guy who once told me,
> "...I'll never use Windows!  It's just a fancy menu system and who needs

And I have NEVER ANY windows any of my machines, so? :)

> I posed a question about enhancing the abilities of the "gmplayer" and I
> received similar responses the gentleman I reference below.  Such
> responses as "code it yourself" "it's too trivial" and "it's not needed
> [enough]"  

And what's YOUR problem? If we do mplayer in our free time, why are you
surprised that we're developing functions which WE needs? :) If you
donate us money, we can leave our workplaces, and work JUST FOR MPlayer,
and we can implement several features requested by users. If you can't do
this, at least help to develope mplayer ... You should not expect from us
to spend our last minutes at midnight to code features we're not interested
in, don't you think?

> eventually but were at least given a chance to grow.  So now Linux
> supports a huge range of things such as obscure file-systems and
> executable binary formats that allow Linux to be useful not only in a
> majority sense, but in a minority one as well.

Yes, but Linux is supported by companies as well ...

> "Code it yourself" isn't always an option.  That's like telling someone

But this is the heart of open source ...
Even Linux started with this ideology.
Nowdays Linux can give you nice GUIs, more-and-more device drivers and so
on, because:

1. Many-many developers working on Linux ("code it yourself if you need it")
2. Companies supporting development or even hiring Linux hackers at full
   worktime for reasonable money ...

> needed.  Sometimes it's the only way to make some things happen. 

Personally I DID NOT say that DVDNAV is stupid feature. The truth is much
simple: we have not got human resource to code AND MAINTAIN (!) that in
our very little free time. Got it? It would be NICE to have. But we can't
do it ...

Even gmplayer's evolution is faster now, because of some support (ask
Pontscho about this topic, though). So for real, MPlayer is a hobby, or
something similar for most of mplayer developers ... MPlayer was created
at first by Arpi because HE (and only HE!) needs a player ... Just like Linux:
it was only Linus' project at the first. I think most of open source projects
started here. To grow further, an open source projects needs more and more
developer and probably some support to able developers to work for their
projects for money. Otherwise they will be limited in their freetime to work
on the project ... Of course MORE developers help in this area too: if someone
really wants help us coding dvdnav support we will be VERY HAPPY ...

- Gábor (larta'H)